Kalewadi river bridge fenced to curb pollution, suicides

The Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) has got iron fencing built on the river bridge at Kalewadi. This has been done to curb the disposal of garbage by citizens directly from the bridge. Another reason why the bridge has been built is that it had become a sort of suicide point.

PCMC has proposed similar precautionary efforts on river bridges across the city.

Besides controlling river pollution, civic officials said, the fences would also help reduce cases of drowning and suicides. During festive season, especially Ganeshotsav and Durga Puja, it had been observed that people throw nirmalya directly into the river from bridges. People keep throwing plastic wrappers or bags. To avoid such river pollution, PCMC decided to install the fencing.

”The environment cell has suggested the engineering department to install fences across all bridges in the city so that the problem can be solved permanently,” PCMC engineering department spokesperson Shirish Poredi told dna.

The spokesperson said the fence would curb suicide attempts. There were several incidents of persons jumping into the river from the bridge to commit suicide and the fire department had to spend hours searching for the victims.

The PCMC had constituted a Nuisance Detection Squad to curb littering of rivers. However, the system failed, and so PCMC put up the iron fencing.